Lost Wage Rampage: A Game

Game developer Jane Friedhoff—known for her inclusiveness and female-forward games—has designed a new game exclusively for PlayTime. Two mall shopgirls find out they’ve been stiffed wages that the men in their department haven’t. Can you help them make up the difference? Welcome to Lost Wage Rampage!

Lost Wage Rampage is a fast-paced riot grrrl driving game: Grand Theft Auto crossed with Thelma & Louise. Designed for teen and mature audiences, the goal of the game is to steal as many valuable objects from the mall as possible, in order to get the money that should have been the girls’ in the first place. Drift, skid, and rocket your car through the mall, crashing into and collecting valuable loot to add to their payback. Get your score as close as you can to the money they should have made while navigating infinite and constantly changing mall layouts. And look out: an ever-growing presence of mall cops is intent on stopping your heist.

Lost Wage Rampage is a cheeky take on the gender pay gap, a satircal game based on the all-too-common female experience of discovering you’re being underpaid and wanting to do something about it.

Ready to play? Download the Lost Wage Rampage app for Mac or Windows here. This work contains strong language and comic mischief that may be unsuitable for younger players. Please use your discretion.

(Team credits: Game design and code by Jane Friedhoff. Art and animation by Marlowe Dobbe. Procedural level gen engine by Andy Wallace. Music credits: “Twisted” by Kevin MacLeod and “Blood Robot” by Streepthroat.)

Jane Friedhoff is a game developer and creative technologist who makes gleefully silly, women-centered arcade games about punk girls in mosh pits, hitting Nazis with handbags, and combatting gender pay disparity through heists. She co-founded the Code Liberation Foundation, which provides free, trans-inclusive, women-only game design and programming classes.